Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and welcome back for Part two of the Vampire Clinic.
Speaker 1: We are going to be spending today exploring the second
Speaker 1: part of our investigation into the link between medical conditions
Speaker 1: and the inspiration of vampire legends and vampire lore. If
Speaker 1: you haven't heard part one yet, you should go back
Speaker 1: and listen to that first. We lay a lot of
Speaker 1: groundwork there. We explore some interesting conditions in cases that
Speaker 1: may or may not apply to varying degrees to the
Speaker 1: vampire legend. But we wanted to continue our exploration today,
Speaker 1: so let's open the clinic and allow the waiting room
Speaker 1: to fill up with potential vampires. All right, let's let's
Speaker 1: get these patients sorted out. Last time, who do we talk?
Speaker 1: We talked about rabies, we talked about syphilis, We talk
Speaker 1: talked about porphyria, conditions which we ultimately concluded were not
Speaker 1: a good inspiration for the vampire legend. It was actually
Speaker 1: kind of a case of the media running with something
Speaker 1: that was actually a pretty tenuous link So so who
Speaker 1: do we have to kick off the episode with today? What? What?
Speaker 1: What is our next patient consist of? Well, I think
Speaker 1: today we should start with a condition that has extremely
Speaker 1: clear links to folk vampire beliefs, something that's way less
Speaker 1: iffy than the conditions we've talked about before, and that
Speaker 1: is going to be tuberculosis. So this is going to
Speaker 1: be one that may not account for all cases or
Speaker 1: for the ultimate origins of vampire beliefs, but it quite
Speaker 1: clearly accounts for some of them. There's very good evidence
Speaker 1: that at least in some cases, vampire beliefs were linked
Speaker 1: to tuberculosis and not just inspired by tuberculosis, like they
Speaker 1: saw somebody who had tuberculosis and thought that's a vampire,
Speaker 1: but they were consciously associated with the disease, if that
Speaker 1: makes sense. So tuberculosis is, first of all, a bacterial
Speaker 1: infection that primarily infects the lungs, and it's spread by
Speaker 1: way of airsolized droplets that get dispersed through the air
Speaker 1: when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Tuberculosis or t
Speaker 1: B is contagious, but it's known primarily for spreading among
Speaker 1: people who are sharing close living conditions. And though TB
Speaker 1: usually attacks the lungs, it can also infect other parts
Speaker 1: of the body, including everything from the kidneys to the
Speaker 1: spine to the brain. The bacterium that causes it is
Speaker 1: micro Bacterium tuberculosis. And one of the crucial things is
Speaker 1: that not everybody who has TV shows symptoms. There's what's
Speaker 1: known as latent TV, in which you are infected with
Speaker 1: the bacterium, but symptoms haven't appeared yet. And we mentioned
Speaker 1: in the last episode how diseases that have latency periods,
Speaker 1: one of which can be some types of syphilis, infection
Speaker 1: um get that can very easily lend itself to supernatural interpretations, right,
Speaker 1: because it becomes even less clear what the link between
Speaker 1: you getting the disease and having the symptoms is, right,
Speaker 1: it becomes this this hidden force. And so I want
Speaker 1: to look at a paper from the American Journal of
Speaker 1: Physical Anthropology that documents one specific case showing a link
Speaker 1: between tuberculosis and vampire beliefs. And the papers by Paul S.
Speaker 1: Sled Zick and Nicholas Belotoni called Bioarchaeological and Biocultural Evidence
Speaker 1: for the New England Vampire folk belief from nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: four So the modern pop culture vampire is, as we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, somewhat different from the eighteenth century euro
Speaker 1: American folk belief in vampires. One thing is that eighteenth
Speaker 1: century European peasants often thought they could look at an
Speaker 1: unearthed corpse and tell whether or not it was a vampire.
Speaker 1: So a vampire would have maybe a bloated chest, long fingernails,
Speaker 1: and and what looked like fresh blood draining away from
Speaker 1: the mouth. And if people exhumed a corpse and they
Speaker 1: they found a quote vampire in this state, it was
Speaker 1: assumed that this was because it had it had been
Speaker 1: leaving its grave to drain life from the living. Now,
Speaker 1: vampires were associated with and blamed for all kinds of
Speaker 1: epidemic diseases. Uh, And if people in an area became
Speaker 1: sick and started wasting away and dying, it was because
Speaker 1: there was a vampire preying on them. And you know,
Speaker 1: so when we're thinking about where to locate these these
Speaker 1: sort of folk villager beliefs and vampires, we very often
Speaker 1: turned to like eighteenth and nineteenth century Eastern Europe, as
Speaker 1: we talked about in the last episode, that was a
Speaker 1: time and place where vampire beliefs were rampant, but they
Speaker 1: were also pretty common in nineteenth century New England. You
Speaker 1: could go to parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds and find people with diseases who
Speaker 1: believed they were being preyed on by vampires. And a
Speaker 1: lot of those beliefs are deeply bound up with tuberculosis infection.
Speaker 1: So the author's right quote, following the death of a
Speaker 1: family member from consumption and that's another word for tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: other family members began to show signs of tuberculosis infection.
Speaker 1: According to the New England folk belief, the wasting away
Speaker 1: of these family members was attributed to the recently deceased
Speaker 1: consumptive who returned from the dead as a vampire to
Speaker 1: drain the life from the surviving relatives. The apotropaic remedy,
Speaker 1: and that means apotropaic magic. It means like warding off evil,
Speaker 1: you know, to repel evil magic. The apotropaic remedy used
Speaker 1: to kill the vampire was to exhume the body of
Speaker 1: the supposed vampire and if the body was undecomposed, remove
Speaker 1: and burn the blood filled heart or the entire body.
Speaker 1: So in this case we're looking at an illness that
Speaker 1: is um it's basically providing a script for the victim
Speaker 1: more so than the the monster itself. Yeah, exactly. I
Speaker 1: mean it is an illness that creates conditions for people
Speaker 1: to think I am being preyed on by a vampire,
Speaker 1: or my family members are being preyed on by a vampire,
Speaker 1: and we've got to do something. We've got to you know,
Speaker 1: Jeff died last week. We're pretty sure it's him. We
Speaker 1: got to dig up his corpse and do something about it.
Speaker 1: Got to apply the apotropaic remedy, which would mean take
Speaker 1: out the heart, check and see if it's full of blood.
Speaker 1: If it is, it's obviously because he's a vampire and
Speaker 1: he's been drinking my blood, and you've got to burn
Speaker 1: the heart. Yeah, maybe just go and burn the heart anyway,
Speaker 1: because you've come this far. Well. As we mentioned in
Speaker 1: the last episode, it seems that it was very common
Speaker 1: to dig up a corpse wondering if the corpse was
Speaker 1: a vampire and discover yes, it was a vampire. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be the one to have to
Speaker 1: go back and say, look, Jeff was okay, he was fine.
Speaker 1: After we violated his grave and removed his heart. We
Speaker 1: just we just stuffed it right back in there. I
Speaker 1: think it's it's basically basically, we reinstalled it. His corps
Speaker 1: is good to go, no harm, no foul. It's a
Speaker 1: factory REFERB REFERB corpse. Uh So the paper, this paper,
Speaker 1: in particular, it explores the impact of this set of
Speaker 1: beliefs I just described on the bio archical logical record,
Speaker 1: which means the study of skeletal remains through one fascinating
Speaker 1: example in particular, so in November nineteen in the town
Speaker 1: of Grizzwald, Connecticut, which I just have to report every
Speaker 1: time I typed when making notes for this episode, I
Speaker 1: typed Grizzworld. I'm just unable to type grizz Wald, and
Speaker 1: I don't know why. But in in grizz World, a
Speaker 1: privately owned sand and gravel business discovered an abandoned eighteenth
Speaker 1: to nineteenth century cemetery was eroding into their work site, right,
Speaker 1: So their quarrying out sand and gravel, and then there's
Speaker 1: this old abandoned cemetery just sort of eroding into their workspaces.
Speaker 1: That's kind of putting the blame on the cemetery. It's
Speaker 1: just like that like this, this uh, this sacred burial
Speaker 1: ground is really infringing on our business here, when I
Speaker 1: think it's more arguably the other way around. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know for sure, but from the way it was
Speaker 1: written about, I tend to assume that the people operating
Speaker 1: the quarry did not know that they were digging into cemetery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: still the ghost don't care well. So the original cemetery,
Speaker 1: because it was a roading, could not be salvaged where
Speaker 1: it was, so the skeletons had to be removed and
Speaker 1: relocated elsewhere. So all in all, the Forgotten Graveyard contained
Speaker 1: the skeletal remains of twenty nine people. There were six
Speaker 1: adult men, aid adult women in fifteen subadults, and the
Speaker 1: researchers were able to determine through land deeds that the
Speaker 1: area had been used as a family graveyard since the
Speaker 1: middle of the eighteenth century by the Walton family, who
Speaker 1: had moved to Grizz World from Rhode Island in sixteen nine.
Speaker 1: Hence it was known as the Walton Cemetery. So when
Speaker 1: they looked at the skeletons, one of the first things
Speaker 1: they saw is okay, the remains clearly indicated that the
Speaker 1: people buried here led lives of hard physical labor. These
Speaker 1: were hard working people. One skeleton in particular caught the
Speaker 1: attention of the archaeologists, the remains of a fifty to
Speaker 1: fifty five year old male in a coffin within a
Speaker 1: stone line grave. They were on the lid of the coffin.
Speaker 1: There was a pattern of tacks shoved into the lid
Speaker 1: that spelled JB. Presumably this was the man's initials and
Speaker 1: the age at which he died. Now inside the coffin,
Speaker 1: things got weirder. Instead of the bones lying in the
Speaker 1: normal arrangement you would see of a dead body, you know,
Speaker 1: like you know, flat with like skull connecting to neck
Speaker 1: and everything JB's skull and his fhemera meaning it's you know,
Speaker 1: his thigh bones, uh, his femurs. They were on top
Speaker 1: of everything else in a skull and crossbones pattern. And
Speaker 1: then underneath the ribs in the vertebrae were also scattered
Speaker 1: out of their natural positions. Beyond that, there were periostitic
Speaker 1: lesions on the left, second, third, and fourth ribs, and
Speaker 1: these would be lesions consistent with what could be caused
Speaker 1: by pulmonary tuberculosis or at the very least a condition
Speaker 1: that people in the nineteenth century probably would have confused
Speaker 1: with tuberculosis. Something uh consisting of violent coughing fits powerful
Speaker 1: enough to cause lesions on the membrane surrounding the rib bones.
Speaker 1: So we have evidence of death by pulmonary tuberculosis or
Speaker 1: some other pulmonary disease that would have looked like tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: and the crazy rearrangement of the bones and the coffin.
Speaker 1: So what's going on. At the time of this paper,
Speaker 1: there were twelve known historical accounts of vampire belief based
Speaker 1: activities in the eighteenth and nineteenth century New England. I've
Speaker 1: included a chart that we can look at, but in
Speaker 1: at least eleven of the twelve cases, the cause of
Speaker 1: death for the supposed vampire was consumption, meaning tuberculosis. So
Speaker 1: there's a clear link between this one particular disease and
Speaker 1: vampire attacks. Now, the authors indicated that the New England
Speaker 1: vampire myth is strongly based in the physical realities of tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: both in how tuberculosis symptoms appear and and how the
Speaker 1: disease is transmitted. So tuberculosis was known as consumption because
Speaker 1: it gave the the appearance of a person wasting away,
Speaker 1: essentially being slowly drained of life and vitality, while at
Speaker 1: the same time remaining conscious and retaining this desire to
Speaker 1: survive and the author's right quote. This dichotomy of desire
Speaker 1: and wasting away is reflected in the vampire folk belief
Speaker 1: the vampire's desire for quote food forces it to feed
Speaker 1: off of living relatives who suffer a similar wasting away
Speaker 1: a lot, and in vampire legends you often see a
Speaker 1: lot of these kind of intentional ironies and uh and juxtapositions,
Speaker 1: you know, the contradictions of like having this otherworldly appetite
Speaker 1: while at the same time appearing gaunt or to to
Speaker 1: waste away in the body. You Know, this does bring
Speaker 1: me back to brown Stoker's Dracula, because I feel like
Speaker 1: this is an aspect of the vampire legend that is
Speaker 1: well represented in that. You know, It's like someone is
Speaker 1: wasting way and what is the cause? Clearly something is
Speaker 1: coming uh into their room in the night, and is
Speaker 1: the the supernatural cause of this consumption? Right with's it's
Speaker 1: there in Dracula when for example, Lucy has to keep
Speaker 1: receiving blood transfusions, right, they all these people keep giving
Speaker 1: her blood because it's like something is making her anemic
Speaker 1: and draining her life away and they don't see what
Speaker 1: it is. But anyway, so in these historical accounts of
Speaker 1: New England vampires, what generally happens is you've got family
Speaker 1: members all living huddled together in close quarters. One member
Speaker 1: of the family gets infected with tuberculosis and dies. Then
Speaker 1: just before or soon after that family member dies, another
Speaker 1: becomes infected with tuberculosis, which is interpreted as the one
Speaker 1: who just died draining the second patient's life in order
Speaker 1: to survive. And of course tuberculosis is well known for
Speaker 1: the ease with which it's transmitted between people living in closer,
Speaker 1: crowded quarters, which would have been common for farmers in
Speaker 1: rural nineteenth century New England. Uh. The author's note also
Speaker 1: that there there would be seasonal lulls and nutrition and
Speaker 1: constant unsanitary conditions, which would of course just make things worse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can only imagine. And the author's right quote. Although
Speaker 1: there is no evidence of tuberculosis in the remaining Walton
Speaker 1: Cemetery skeletons, and eighteen o one narrative of Griswold History
Speaker 1: indicates that during the twenty five years preceding the account,
Speaker 1: consumptions had proved to be mortal to a number. So, okay,
Speaker 1: let's say half your family they've got consumption, and you
Speaker 1: think it's because the one of you who just died
Speaker 1: is a vampire. What do you do to stop it? Well,
Speaker 1: you have to go out and kill the vampire. So
Speaker 1: in eighteenth and nineteenth century New England, the contemporaneous accounts
Speaker 1: indicate you would do this as follows. First you've got
Speaker 1: to dig up the body. Then you check and see
Speaker 1: is their blood in the heart, And if there's blood
Speaker 1: in the heart, you've got to burn the heart. Many
Speaker 1: accounts of the time seemed to indicate that when people
Speaker 1: dug up bodies for this reason, they just generally found
Speaker 1: the body undecomposed with blood in the heart, so they'd
Speaker 1: find what they were looking for. And the reason dead
Speaker 1: bodies often had these appearances is normal, and it's due
Speaker 1: to post mortem decomposition. There's a book called Vampires, Burial
Speaker 1: and Death, Folklore and Reality by an author named Barbera
Speaker 1: that gets cited a lot on this account about how
Speaker 1: people would mistake and naturally uh the natural effects of
Speaker 1: post mortem decomposition for stuff that indicated a dead body
Speaker 1: was still alive and feeding, like the you know, the
Speaker 1: bloating and the blood running from the mouth and all that,
Speaker 1: or that prominent genitalia. Oh yeah, from the from the
Speaker 1: rabies case. Right, Okay, So what about JB. Back to
Speaker 1: j B who had his his bones arranged in the
Speaker 1: Skull and Crossbones, Well, the evidence indicates that when his
Speaker 1: family members dug him up, he was already decomposed. There
Speaker 1: was not any soft tissue left on his bones. So
Speaker 1: what do you do You think JB is the vampire
Speaker 1: that's draining your family members of life. You dig him up,
Speaker 1: there's no soft tissue, there's no heart to burn. So
Speaker 1: the authors have a hypothesis of apparently the alternative to
Speaker 1: burning the heart if there's no heart left is to
Speaker 1: rearrange the bones and to place the skull in an
Speaker 1: apotropaic symbol. The skull and crossbones and the author's right quote.
Speaker 1: In support of this hypothesis, we note that decapitation was
Speaker 1: a common European method of dispatching a dead vampire, and
Speaker 1: that the Celts and the Neolithic Egyptians were known to
Speaker 1: separate the head from the body supposedly to prevent the
Speaker 1: dead from doing harm. And on top of that, the
Speaker 1: authors provide some documentary evidence in the form of newspaper
Speaker 1: articles showing that vampire beliefs were to be found in
Speaker 1: the vicinity of Griswold, Connecticut in the middle of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. There's a story from an eighteen fifty four
Speaker 1: issue of the Norwich Courier about an incident near in
Speaker 1: nearby Jewitt City in which consumption had killed a man
Speaker 1: named Horace Ray and three of his sons, and then
Speaker 1: several of their dead bodies were exhumed and burned in
Speaker 1: order to stop them from feeding on other members of
Speaker 1: the living family. So this is a somewhat different kind
Speaker 1: of case than the things we looked at in the
Speaker 1: last episode. Uh, this is a case where sort of
Speaker 1: where the local epidemiology of tuberculosis included beliefs about vampireism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one really surprised me. I was not I was
Speaker 1: not expecting it, partially, I think because when when I
Speaker 1: went into it, I really was more focused. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about what are the diseases that line up with
Speaker 1: the monster. I wasn't thinking about the Uh, the traumatic
Speaker 1: scenario of people wasting away uh in a family and
Speaker 1: then looking for what is the supernatural cause of this,
Speaker 1: what is the source of the curse? Well, it seems
Speaker 1: to be like it's extending the symptoms of the disease
Speaker 1: to beyond death. Right, So it combines this idea that
Speaker 1: people who had consumption were wasting away, they needed some
Speaker 1: kind of nourishment or they needed some kind of vitality
Speaker 1: to come back to them, and they strongly wanted to survive.
Speaker 1: They remained lucid, and they like had their will to live.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like saying, Okay, even after they die
Speaker 1: in they're buried, those coptoms continue like they're still wasting away.
Speaker 1: They still need life and they still must return to
Speaker 1: get it somehow. I mean, the nefarious thing about this
Speaker 1: is that it is a predictive legend, like it is
Speaker 1: predicting how the how the the illness will likely spread
Speaker 1: within a given family and what will happen to those individuals. Um.
Speaker 1: It just has this uh supernatural explanation for what's occurring
Speaker 1: and a remedy that is ultimately going to be rather
Speaker 1: indifferent to the actual spread of the disease. I think
Speaker 1: that that would be the ultimate horror, wouldn't it that
Speaker 1: you you dig up the grave, you violate the corpse
Speaker 1: of a family member, and then it doesn't stop the illness,
Speaker 1: which I guess probably forces one to think, well, what
Speaker 1: it must We must have got the wrong grave, we
Speaker 1: didn't get the vampire. There's a second vampire, and maybe
Speaker 1: the madness continues UM, as opposed to just realizing, oh,
Speaker 1: this line of thinking is UM is incorrect. You know
Speaker 1: one thing I often think about with UM stuff like
Speaker 1: this that's not clearly self limiting, Like the disease is
Speaker 1: going to do what it's gonna do either way. It's
Speaker 1: not like a an easily placebo effect controlled condition where
Speaker 1: you can you know, you're experiencing pain and maybe doing
Speaker 1: some kind of magic spell or apotropaic remedy might make
Speaker 1: you think you feel better. Right, you still have a
Speaker 1: TV infection and thinking that you've fixed it with apotropaic
Speaker 1: magic is not going to make the bacteria bacterial infection
Speaker 1: go away, right. Um, So you have to wonder, like,
Speaker 1: how did people react to the clear failure of their interventions? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean part of it I think probably goes back
Speaker 1: to our episode on Curses, is that either would be
Speaker 1: this period where you feel a little better, perhaps due
Speaker 1: to the placebo effect, the placebo effect of of of
Speaker 1: graveyard desecration, uh, you know, by the placebo effect. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: so I could they could, I could see where that
Speaker 1: might make. That may be a factor. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: we killed the vampire and she got a little better,
Speaker 1: but it was really too late. Oh yeah, it had
Speaker 1: already gotten the fangs in it. Yeah. I mean. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: one thing about tuberculosis is also today there are real
Speaker 1: treatments for tuberculosis. I mean, you can get courses of antibiotics.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think it's the easiest thing to treat.
Speaker 1: I think I've read that you have to get like
Speaker 1: long courses of antibiotics to treat tuberculosis today. But there
Speaker 1: do exist treatments. So for this one, I think I
Speaker 1: keep coming back to Dracula as being a good, um,
Speaker 1: a good cinematic literary vampire to consider, as as the
Speaker 1: TV vampire. The way it's causing say Lucy to slowly
Speaker 1: waste away over days and they don't know how to
Speaker 1: stop it. Yeah, And then I mean, and that was
Speaker 1: a very influential work. So I think he's the shades
Speaker 1: of that another vampire fiction, Salem's Lot, comes to mind.
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's definitely one that plays with the
Speaker 1: idea of the vampire essentially slipping in in the night
Speaker 1: and doing it's uh, it's uh, it's it's um, it's
Speaker 1: work on you. All right, On that note, we're gonna
Speaker 1: tell a quick break, and when we come back, we
Speaker 1: will diagnose some more blood drinkers. Thank thank Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: The vampire clinic is open, and we're going to see
Speaker 1: the next patient apparently presenting with vampirism. And now, the
Speaker 1: last case we looked at, it turned out what was
Speaker 1: really inspiring this belief in vampirism was tuberculosis. And I
Speaker 1: would say in that last case, we've been offering verdicts
Speaker 1: on how clear we think the link is between certain
Speaker 1: diseases and vampire lore. Clearly there is some link with tuberculosis.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much undisputable. This next one, I think is
Speaker 1: more disputable, but it's also very historically interesting. So I
Speaker 1: want to look at a paper by Jeffrey S. Hample
Speaker 1: and William S. Hample. I assume they're probably related called
Speaker 1: Pelagra in the Origin of a myth. Evidence from European
Speaker 1: Literature and Folklore from the Journal of the Royal Society
Speaker 1: of Medicine from so. The authors write that in eighteenth
Speaker 1: and nineteenth century Europe, villagers often mixed edicine and magic,
Speaker 1: with many diseases assumed to have supernatural causes, and when
Speaker 1: a disease lingered in a village, villagers often assumed that
Speaker 1: the first person to come down with the disease was
Speaker 1: a vampire. And the vampire legend can be seen as
Speaker 1: an early attempt to try to understand contagion. I think
Speaker 1: that's been coming through and a lot of what we've
Speaker 1: talked about already. It's almost like vamporism is a folk
Speaker 1: logic way of trying to understand the mechanics of contagion
Speaker 1: and infection. And one of the things, actually the authors
Speaker 1: of this paper point out that's kind of interesting, the
Speaker 1: term nos ferrato. You know where that comes from, Robert
Speaker 1: uh No, not well, so, it was popularized by Bram
Speaker 1: Stoker in the novel Dracula. It most probably comes from
Speaker 1: a Romanian word used for like satan or devil, but
Speaker 1: maybe kind of a generic term for some sort of
Speaker 1: embodied evil, like that's a nos feratu or the nos
Speaker 1: ferato will come in. I think it, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it means something like that, you know, the
Speaker 1: the unwanted one or something like that. But it's a
Speaker 1: term that Romanian speaking people would have used for the
Speaker 1: devil or for satan. But the authors of the paper
Speaker 1: also note a possible, just possible connection to the Greek
Speaker 1: word no suffer us, meaning disease carrier counts. I want
Speaker 1: to see that show up somewhere, and it could be
Speaker 1: a false cognate, but but I like the idea of
Speaker 1: that link that, and it certainly makes sense given all
Speaker 1: the historical accounts we've been talking about and that, you know,
Speaker 1: they mentioned that other diseases have been proposed as the
Speaker 1: possible link to as the possible inspiration or genesis of
Speaker 1: the vampire legend, rabies, tuberculosis, orthropoietic porphyria, which in the
Speaker 1: last episode we talked about how we think is not
Speaker 1: a good explanation actually, but the authors here believe that
Speaker 1: that none of the proposed diseases is adequate to explain
Speaker 1: widespread belief in vampires in Europe during this period, and
Speaker 1: they propose an alternative that's pretty interesting. A vitamin deficiency.
Speaker 1: So they propose pelagro, which is quote a dietary deficiency
Speaker 1: of niacin, which is also known is vitamin B three
Speaker 1: and UH, and a deficiency of trip to fan which
Speaker 1: is something that the body converts in denias and kind
Speaker 1: of the same way the body converts beta caroteen into
Speaker 1: vitamin A. This is interesting. I go to health food
Speaker 1: stores so with with a fair amount of frequency, I
Speaker 1: never see a vampire there. So I'm already liking this
Speaker 1: theory a lot. Right, Vitamin supplements keep the vampires away? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what is it? A vitamin B three a day keeps
Speaker 1: the van helsing away. Yeah, A perfect ring of B
Speaker 1: three uh. Tablets or or even lozenges or um will
Speaker 1: will surround If you surround your bed with that, it'll
Speaker 1: keep the nosferatus from creeping in. So how could a
Speaker 1: vitamin deficiency explain vamporism. Well, plagro was first recognized in
Speaker 1: seventeen thirty five, and it affected lots of people throughout
Speaker 1: Europe in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Speaker 1: And we we've been talking in the past couple episodes
Speaker 1: about how common vampire beliefs seem to be in especially
Speaker 1: like eighteenth and nineteenth century Eastern Europe. So why then,
Speaker 1: why they're and the authors write about how before this
Speaker 1: many bulk food crops in Europe would have been rye
Speaker 1: or wheat, but in the eighteenth century, European farmers begins
Speaker 1: substituting corn or corn you know, maize, the crop from America,
Speaker 1: because it actually yielded more food calories per acre of
Speaker 1: crop land. So you might think, okay, yeah, that's easy.
Speaker 1: You've got the same amount of farmland, but you get
Speaker 1: more food out of it. It's a no brainer, right.
Speaker 1: So corn became a staple crop, spreading slowly from the
Speaker 1: Iberian Peninsula to the east and eventually becoming common in
Speaker 1: eastern Europe. But there's a downside to switching over from
Speaker 1: wheat and ride a corn meal based to a corn
Speaker 1: meal based diet. Corn Meal contains niacin and tripped to
Speaker 1: fan in a chemically bound state with low bioavailability, meaning
Speaker 1: that though your body can get lots of usable calories
Speaker 1: of energy out of corn meal, it can't get much
Speaker 1: nicacin or tripped to fan to turn into nice and
Speaker 1: so poor people throughout Europe who had switched over to
Speaker 1: a corn meal based diet began to suffer from a
Speaker 1: deficiency of niacin or vitamin B three, a deficiency known
Speaker 1: as pelagra. Okay, I see where this is heading then,
Speaker 1: uh so so so I guess now we have to
Speaker 1: really get into the symptoms of pellagra, right, So, doctors
Speaker 1: in Spain and Italy were quicker to recognize the disease
Speaker 1: and its cause, and in Eastern Europe, apparently poverty and
Speaker 1: the lack of medical expertise sort of kept the disease
Speaker 1: from being diagnosed very much until well into the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: So the symptoms you mentioned, pelagra is characterized by what's
Speaker 1: known as the four d s. You've got dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia,
Speaker 1: and death. And those are some dastardly ds. I want
Speaker 1: no part of any of those. Yeah, death is especially dastardly,
Speaker 1: as we all know. So pellagra causes first of all, dermatitis,
Speaker 1: which is inflammation of the skin. One easy thing to
Speaker 1: remember is that pretty much any time you see itis
Speaker 1: in a word, it means something about inflamation or swelling. Uh,
Speaker 1: dermatitis inflammation of the skin. Now, there are many types
Speaker 1: of dermatitis. Any rash is a form of dermatitis, but
Speaker 1: the severe dermatitis brought on by PELAGRAAH can include rashes
Speaker 1: on the face, rashes on the mouth, the hands and feet,
Speaker 1: or around the neck in a formation that's known as
Speaker 1: a castle collar casle necklace. If you look it up,
Speaker 1: it's very creepy looking. It looks like a it's it's
Speaker 1: this rash around the base of the neck. It's it's
Speaker 1: super Does it look like something that's been like gnawing
Speaker 1: at your neck, well, yeah, or it looks like something
Speaker 1: somebody's put a noose around your neck or something interesting. Now,
Speaker 1: these rashes can be discolored with reference to the rest
Speaker 1: of the skin. They can be red and flaky, they
Speaker 1: can crust over, be scaly or thick, dry and cracked,
Speaker 1: and there can also be sores on the mouth, tongue, gums,
Speaker 1: and lips. And what's more, the author's point out that
Speaker 1: these areas of the skin with dermatitis can be hyper
Speaker 1: sensitive to light quote sun Exposed areas at first become
Speaker 1: red and thick with hypercrotosis and scaling. This is followed
Speaker 1: by inflammation and adema, which eventually leads to depigmented, shiny skin,
Speaker 1: alternating with rough brown scally areas with repeated episodes of
Speaker 1: ari athema, a pelagrin's skin become becomes paper thin and
Speaker 1: assumes a parchment like texture. And this is this is
Speaker 1: an aspect of the vampire that I don't think we've
Speaker 1: discussed yet, the fact that the vampire almost always has
Speaker 1: this this pale, deathly pallor. Yeah, the vampire is often
Speaker 1: portrayed as having a depigmented look, often depicted as kind
Speaker 1: of an alternating like pale and then rosy red like
Speaker 1: in the lips or the mouth. Um. And the obvious
Speaker 1: comparison is that vampires displayed sensitivity to sunlight, of course,
Speaker 1: and they must come to in the words of Count
Speaker 1: Dracula loved the Shade and Shadow, And the authors actually
Speaker 1: cite the novel Draecula as a point of comparison. They
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is the best way to
Speaker 1: do it, but the reason that citing comparison to Dracula
Speaker 1: is reasonable because Stoker did lots of research collecting vampire
Speaker 1: folklore from Eastern Europe, so they say his novel serves
Speaker 1: as a pretty good record of folk vampire beliefs sort
Speaker 1: of wrapped up into one character. I don't know how
Speaker 1: legitimate that is. Maybe, I mean, I think he did
Speaker 1: do research r right, I mean, I guess this is
Speaker 1: a legitimate is wondering if he had syphilis or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, given the time period, a lot of people
Speaker 1: had syphilis, right, so they say, you know, Count Dracula
Speaker 1: is also described as a man of quote extraordinary pallor,
Speaker 1: with not quote a speck of color about him, and
Speaker 1: yet with a quote bloated face. Stoker also says that
Speaker 1: the vampire has remarkable ruddiness of the lips, so pale face,
Speaker 1: pale bloated face, and then remarkably red lips, and he
Speaker 1: describes the three vampire brides and Dracula's castle with the
Speaker 1: words the ruddy color, the voluptuous lips. And this could
Speaker 1: be sort of a third hand reflection of the way
Speaker 1: people with pelagra would have redness and swelling of the lips,
Speaker 1: though often leading to a cracking that you probably would
Speaker 1: not describe as voluptuous. I guess you know. This reminds me, specifically, though,
Speaker 1: of some of the depictions I've seen of ghoules, which
Speaker 1: have certain vampire qualities. And we did a whole episode
Speaker 1: on ghouls a while back, that's running as a Vault
Speaker 1: episode this month, but in particular, there was a Tales
Speaker 1: from the Crypt episode called Morning Mess. Uh. Mourning is
Speaker 1: in like Mourning for the Dead? Uh that in it's
Speaker 1: a fabulous episode, my favorite Tales from the Crypt episode.
Speaker 1: But it has some wonderful ghouls in it. And the
Speaker 1: ghouls are depicted, you know as this kind of like
Speaker 1: grayish pale creatures, hairless, um kind of eleven ears. And
Speaker 1: they have these big grotesque lips though, that are cracked
Speaker 1: in the manner that you're describing. Oh, I just looked
Speaker 1: it up. Yes, exactly, They're red. They're all cracked, parched,
Speaker 1: almost showing clear evidence of hyperkerotosis. Uh. That's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: And so another thing that the authors point out here
Speaker 1: is that vampires in folklore are often characterized as having
Speaker 1: quote a foul mouth or bad breath, and the authors
Speaker 1: note that this maybe the origin of the use of
Speaker 1: garlic as a remedy for vamporism through homeopathic logic, right,
Speaker 1: you like cures, Like, so the villagers wanted to fight
Speaker 1: fire with fire, you've got foul mouth, give them garlic
Speaker 1: to cure it. I'm thinking a lot of people had
Speaker 1: foul mouth though, that is a very good point. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you could have fouler than average mouth, but yeah,
Speaker 1: just eating eating a lot of a lot of corn meal,
Speaker 1: never brushing your teeth. Yeah, so you described the lips.
Speaker 1: But but how about the tongue of the vampire. Job, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is a good you know, this gets reference. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you dig up a corpse and say, oh, the face
Speaker 1: is swollen. There's something you know, the tongue is swollen
Speaker 1: or something. And apparently a person with pelaugraa will often
Speaker 1: have an alarming looking tongue with gloss sitis, swelling of
Speaker 1: the tongue, an extreme redness, sort of visually associating the
Speaker 1: mouth with blood, while the skin might be pale, cracked
Speaker 1: and parchment like. So try to picture it. You've got shiny, depigmented,
Speaker 1: parchment like skin and then like a red, blistering mouth
Speaker 1: with a swollen, red tongue. You look at that and
Speaker 1: he's like, that could be a vampire. Yeah. Then again,
Speaker 1: I wonder how much of that is just playing on
Speaker 1: like the vampires we've come to know through twentieth century
Speaker 1: movies and stuff. I think about the depiction of once
Speaker 1: Lucy becomes a vampire and Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. You know,
Speaker 1: the pale parchment like shiny depigmented skin and the hugely
Speaker 1: red mouth. I don't know if that's always there in
Speaker 1: the more traditional vampire folklore. I know, in fact, one
Speaker 1: thing we've read is that sometimes it not always, but
Speaker 1: sometimes people believed vampires to look healthy and look, you
Speaker 1: know the opposite of this. Well, we get into the
Speaker 1: swelling of the lips, right it gets confusing because like
Speaker 1: like like thick certainly had lips are generally considered alluring.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things about like the cracked lips,
Speaker 1: Like that's where you get into the idea that that
Speaker 1: it's like almost category confusion. They're right, like the lips
Speaker 1: are big and red, but they are also grotesque. I
Speaker 1: did not know if I should be repelled or attracted
Speaker 1: to the vampire. Well, and you know, some eighteenth century
Speaker 1: Eastern European peasants probably didn't like category confusion. Right now, another,
Speaker 1: so that's the first d dermatitis. Another symptom is diarrhea
Speaker 1: pea causes uh dysfunction of the gut and the g
Speaker 1: I tract. And I know everybody from when we when
Speaker 1: you first mentioned the four ds, they've they've been waiting
Speaker 1: for you to hit this and explain the link between
Speaker 1: diarrhea and vampires. Well, this might have the least link
Speaker 1: to the vampire, but we'll see. So the authors say,
Speaker 1: vampire legends, of course don't often mention diarrhea. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: But they say, well, you probably wouldn't have expected the
Speaker 1: records of the time to make a lot of about diarrhea.
Speaker 1: But there are some associated ideas. A common part of
Speaker 1: the vampire a gend is the idea that the vampire
Speaker 1: needs only blood and will refuse normal food, and there
Speaker 1: are sections in Dracula that talk about this, like the
Speaker 1: Count keeps apologizing to Jonathan Harker for not dining with him.
Speaker 1: You know I have dined already, and that donuts up.
Speaker 1: Also later, when Mina Harker is turning into a vampire,
Speaker 1: she describes how she found herself unable to eat food.
Speaker 1: She says, I could not eat. To even try to
Speaker 1: do so was repulsive to me. It's convincing, but I
Speaker 1: would be more convinced if there were parts in Dracula
Speaker 1: where the Count says, excuse me, I must go to
Speaker 1: the restroom. Again, and this occurs like every like ten minutes,
Speaker 1: and he's constantly drinking water orange juice. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't think to do this, but I should have just
Speaker 1: searched the medical literature for the phrase diarrhea of vampire,
Speaker 1: and I didn't try it. You know, maybe something will
Speaker 1: come up. There's our there's our our, our metal band
Speaker 1: name for the for the episode the vampire diarrhea. I
Speaker 1: think that would be a good, good, good name. Wait,
Speaker 1: what's better, diarrhea vampire or vampire diarrhea? Diarrhea of vampire?
Speaker 1: Probably almost starting to move on. So the author is
Speaker 1: right that the inability or unwillingness to eat is a
Speaker 1: common feature of pelagra because of discomfort caused by the
Speaker 1: mucous membrane lesions and the esophagus, the stomach, the colon.
Speaker 1: So you get diarrhea, lack of appetite, and you might wonder, like,
Speaker 1: why would pelagra affect dermatitis and diarrhea. Well, niacin deficiency
Speaker 1: is most apparent where new cells are manufactured most frequently,
Speaker 1: and this includes the skin and the g I tract. Okay,
Speaker 1: you ready for the next day. For d number three,
Speaker 1: I think three this is dementia, so people suffering from
Speaker 1: pelagra will eventually develop neurological symptoms appearing as some form
Speaker 1: of dementia. The lack of nyacin causes a metabolic deficiency
Speaker 1: that causes neurons in the brain to degenerate, manifesting as
Speaker 1: things like insomnia, anxiety, aggression, and depression, and these symptoms,
Speaker 1: the author's note, are of the manic depressive type. So
Speaker 1: folklore often claims that the vampire does not sleep at
Speaker 1: night and becomes more rose or irritable, and the authors
Speaker 1: compare this set of symptoms to the character of Rinfield
Speaker 1: in the novel Dracula. The Rinfields is not a vampire himself,
Speaker 1: he wants to become one. He's emulating the vampire, and
Speaker 1: he still exhibits the characteristics associated in the folklore with
Speaker 1: burgeoning vampiism and the character of Dr Seward, Rinfield's doctor
Speaker 1: in the book, describes Rnfield as follows quote sanguine temperament,
Speaker 1: morbidly excitable, periods of gloom, a possibly dangerous man, a
Speaker 1: great character to be sure, yes. The authors point out
Speaker 1: that pelagrea can also sometimes be associated with pika, and
Speaker 1: pika of course as a disorder in which you have
Speaker 1: a pathological appetite often, you know, for substances that are
Speaker 1: not foods, like soil or paper, hair, ice, clay, and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah, dirt and clay in particular often
Speaker 1: are often explored in this area. Yeah, And the authors
Speaker 1: speculate that this would be a part of the body's
Speaker 1: desperate attempt to find something to eat with niacin in it. Right,
Speaker 1: people with pelagra have been reported to crave substances like
Speaker 1: vinegar and spices, and the authors draw the connection with
Speaker 1: Rinfield's obsessive appetite for living things like spiders, birds, and mice.
Speaker 1: Though I don't know, I feel like that one might
Speaker 1: be kind of a stretch because from the vampire point
Speaker 1: of view, wouldn't spiders, birds and mice contain some actual
Speaker 1: nutrition and it's sort of a form of meat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one feels like more of a stretch, though I
Speaker 1: love the idea of I mean, we know that there's
Speaker 1: often this this this necessity for the vampire to have
Speaker 1: access to its grave dirt from its native soil. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's indracula itself. Um, I don't think it's I've never
Speaker 1: heard of story where's where it's implied that the vampire
Speaker 1: eats the dirt. But now I kind of want that.
Speaker 1: I want a nice grave, dirt eating vampire. Well, there's
Speaker 1: also the idea that consecrated soil can be dangerous to
Speaker 1: the vampire. Is it because the vampire is tempted to
Speaker 1: ingest it? Yeah, it could be accidental, uh sort of
Speaker 1: holy poisoning there. Yeah, Okay, so the fourth d time
Speaker 1: for death. So as opposed to the modern vampire, where
Speaker 1: we all know the modern movie vampire, I think of
Speaker 1: like when I try to think of the best modern
Speaker 1: movie vampire, example, maybe it's Chris Srandon and Fright Night. Right,
Speaker 1: that's just like that's modern movie vampire to the max
Speaker 1: for right Night. Uh So in that kind, in that case,
Speaker 1: like a single bite or encounter is enough to kill
Speaker 1: a person and turn them into a vampire. Right. But
Speaker 1: in the vampire of eighteenth the nineteenth century Eastern European folklore,
Speaker 1: it's generally a creature that slowly drains life, essence, and
Speaker 1: health over a long period of time, repeatedly attacking the
Speaker 1: same victims again and again in the night, and leaving
Speaker 1: evidence in the form of a person's wasting, illness becoming
Speaker 1: worse and worse over time, Robert, would you agree with
Speaker 1: that characterization? Yeah, yeah, the idea that someone has drained
Speaker 1: too much too often they can become the thing that
Speaker 1: drained them. Yeah, or at least just be killed. But
Speaker 1: it's not just like one random attack usually does it
Speaker 1: in this lore, so the vampire was also never caught
Speaker 1: in the attack. Instead, it was like, oof, well, you know,
Speaker 1: Victor looks even worse than he did yesterday. Must have
Speaker 1: been that vampire again, right, And it helps classify the
Speaker 1: vampire more as a parasitic entity as opposed to a
Speaker 1: predatory Uh. Entity. I think that's a good point. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: as we discussed with other diseases, including things like tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: vampire folklore often takes what we would interpret as a
Speaker 1: bunch of people all getting the same disease and dying
Speaker 1: over time as the first person who got this disease
Speaker 1: and died from it was a vampire, and they were
Speaker 1: returning from the grave for revenge against their friends and
Speaker 1: family members by slowly draining their life essence. Since the
Speaker 1: impoverished families of Eastern Europe generally would have all had
Speaker 1: the same diet, if one person got pelagra, you would
Speaker 1: expect other members of the family to develop it as well,
Speaker 1: And how long it takes pelagra to kill you is
Speaker 1: not fixed. If untreated, it can take four to five
Speaker 1: years to kill somebody, but it can also kill suddenly
Speaker 1: in earlier stages when symptoms are less pronounced. And they
Speaker 1: also note that a person with advanced pelagra who appears
Speaker 1: anemic from gastro intestinal bleeding could have been interpreted as
Speaker 1: the living dead. Well in all, I think this makes
Speaker 1: for an interesting argument. They offer a few more shorter
Speaker 1: lines of evidence, and I think let's look at those
Speaker 1: after we take a break. Thank alright, we're back. Okay.
Speaker 1: Other bits of evidence that the authors of this paper
Speaker 1: we've been talking about have for pelagra being the cause
Speaker 1: of vampires. M one is historical timing. So they point
Speaker 1: out that the word vampire, the verd vampire first entered
Speaker 1: English in seventeen thirty four, quote a year before pelagra
Speaker 1: was noted by a royal physician as a quote disgusting
Speaker 1: indigenous disease among Spanish peasants. Nothing like a like a
Speaker 1: condescending royal physician. Yeah, um, but yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: not really a piece of evidence. But the authors just
Speaker 1: note that. Even in the novel Dracula, when Jonathan Harker
Speaker 1: is on his way to count Dracula's castle, he stops
Speaker 1: somewhere and eats a local breakfast, which is a porridge
Speaker 1: of maize flower. So if people were eating corn meal
Speaker 1: products as their main staple, they may very well have
Speaker 1: been susceptible to pelagra. A couple of other interesting things
Speaker 1: that might be kind of a stretch. One is the
Speaker 1: link between seeds. So you know that old legend that
Speaker 1: you can protect yourself against a vampire by scattering seeds
Speaker 1: on the ground. Oh, this is an idea. They have
Speaker 1: to count them all and the kind of similar in
Speaker 1: the idea that you have like a complex not they
Speaker 1: have to like analyze the string, right, Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: can you can distract a vampire by giving them something
Speaker 1: to occupy their attention. You throw the throw rice or
Speaker 1: seeds on the ground and they'll be forced to count
Speaker 1: them all right, So like the modern vert, you can
Speaker 1: leave a magic eye book out and they would or
Speaker 1: they've not some suducu and they would have to go
Speaker 1: through the entire booklet and in the sunlight would destroy them.
Speaker 1: It's the Sunday times here, do the crossword puzzle. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the the author's note that millet seeds were commonly cited
Speaker 1: for this usage, and they say, you know, that's ironic
Speaker 1: because millet actually has an excess of loosine, which is
Speaker 1: an amino acid that blocks the conversion of trip to
Speaker 1: fan in denyasin, meaning millet could make a case of
Speaker 1: pelagra even worse. I think that's an interesting coincidence, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't really strike me as evidence. Still, it's basically
Speaker 1: the joke I made earlier about taking B three tablets
Speaker 1: and spreading them all over your your bedroom, Like that's
Speaker 1: kind of what they're arguing here, is that you've done
Speaker 1: that with the seats. Well, but it would be the
Speaker 1: exact opposite of that. Actually, it would be like it
Speaker 1: would be like spreading around B three blockers. Um. Another
Speaker 1: thing they bring up is timing during the year. So
Speaker 1: pellagra is often referred to as a springtime disease. Why
Speaker 1: is that, Well, in the springtime, the new crops haven't
Speaker 1: come in yet, so dried corn meal is going to
Speaker 1: be a big part of the diet. You don't have
Speaker 1: fresh produce to eat yet. So pair this with the
Speaker 1: idea that St. George's day, which is in late April
Speaker 1: or early May, is traditionally believed to be the day
Speaker 1: that vampires would come together to plan their attacks for
Speaker 1: the coming year. And in Dracula, Jonathan Harker is told
Speaker 1: upon his arrival in Transylvania, quote, it is the eve
Speaker 1: of St. George's Day? Do you not know that tonight,
Speaker 1: when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in
Speaker 1: the world will have full sway. Wow. This reminds me
Speaker 1: a lot of the werewolf game. Right, It's like, now
Speaker 1: all the villagers go to sleep, the vampires wake up
Speaker 1: and plot against the villagers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: who do you want to kill tonight? Uh? So finally
Speaker 1: they cite disinterment and this connection seems likely coincidental to me,
Speaker 1: but also interesting, kind of like the millet thing. So
Speaker 1: when a vampire was suspected, villagers would often dig up
Speaker 1: a recently buried body to inspect it for signs of
Speaker 1: vampiresm We've been talking about that. But one sign apparently
Speaker 1: of the corpse being a vampire was that the face,
Speaker 1: of course was read and marked with fresh blood. But
Speaker 1: another sign was a ring of corn meal around the
Speaker 1: vampire's mouth. Oh I don't know. It seems like kind
Speaker 1: of a stretch. But that's also interesting now that this
Speaker 1: is a great example of something that's just too stupid
Speaker 1: to really make its way into any like cinematic or
Speaker 1: literary treatment of the vampire. Right, the corn meal around
Speaker 1: the mouth, Well, wouldn't that have been great if you
Speaker 1: put that into Coppola's Dracula. So Gary oldman's walking around
Speaker 1: in his dandy costume, but he's got corn meal all
Speaker 1: over his mouth. He's constantly eating corn flakes. He's a
Speaker 1: vitamin deficiency vampire, modern day London. I've got another piece
Speaker 1: of evidence for them. Okay, who is the bane of
Speaker 1: the of the vampires and Dracula? Dr Van Helsing? And
Speaker 1: who played him so well in Francis Ford Coppola's version,
Speaker 1: Anthony Hopkins. And what famous nutritionist figure did Anthony Hopkins
Speaker 1: also play? I don't know Kellogg? He did? Yes, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Yeah, the Road to Wellville? Okay, I
Speaker 1: didn't know. Did did Kellogg give people vitamin B three?
Speaker 1: I'm not shotting on that, but he gave a lot
Speaker 1: of people a lot of things. And uh, Anthony Hopkins's
Speaker 1: performance and that movie is so wonderful and so absurd.
Speaker 1: I want to see I want to see his Kellogg
Speaker 1: fight the vampires. I think that would have been amazing.
Speaker 1: Man Kellogg versus Dracula, somebody make that movie right now.
Speaker 1: That would be amazing. Somebody should make a series of
Speaker 1: like the Greatest Quacks in the History of Medicine versus Vampires.
Speaker 1: I want to see Dracula versus Who's that guy that
Speaker 1: that US doctor who did like the goat go nad
Speaker 1: implants on people. Oh goodness, I feel like we've discussed
Speaker 1: him on the show before, but his name is not
Speaker 1: coming to mind. Brinkley, John Brinkley, Yeah, yeah, or the
Speaker 1: the character who thought that you could treat mental ailments
Speaker 1: by removing teeth. That one would be another one to
Speaker 1: throw up against the fan. I don't remember who that was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his name isn't isn't coming to me either, But he's
Speaker 1: a character that showed up on the television series The
Speaker 1: Nick as well, played by John Hodgman. Actually, oh really, yeah,
Speaker 1: John Hodgman's finest performance in my opinion. Okay, so we
Speaker 1: gotta wrap up Pelagres. So in conclusion, the authors note
Speaker 1: you know they're there are actually some other vitamin deficiencies
Speaker 1: that could cause similar symptoms, like the ones they mentioned
Speaker 1: gloss idis, the spelling of the tongue anemia, and arexia pika.
Speaker 1: But pellagra is the one that would have been historically
Speaker 1: most likely to do so because of the historical timing
Speaker 1: in the spread of corn you know, corn meal as
Speaker 1: a food staple throughout Europe. So coming down the end here,
Speaker 1: what do we think our verdict is? I think this
Speaker 1: is this one seems like a mixed bag to me.
Speaker 1: Some of the evidence, like the historical timing seems very good,
Speaker 1: and other stuff it really seems like they're reaching at
Speaker 1: the most. I feel like any of these illnesses is
Speaker 1: going to match up with you know, just aspects of
Speaker 1: the vampirement would have helped contribute to the way the
Speaker 1: myth took shape. But yeah, I feel like it's it's
Speaker 1: ultimately kind of a fool's errand to try and just
Speaker 1: boil it all down to one particular ailment. Now, there
Speaker 1: are a number of different illnesses that we didn't have
Speaker 1: time to discuss here, um, particularly in cases where that
Speaker 1: connection is maybe less robust. For instance, uh, the work
Speaker 1: of Juan Gomez Alonso m D that I referenced in
Speaker 1: the first episode. In passing, he mentioned that some connections
Speaker 1: have been made between the vampire myth and schizophrenia. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I feel like, you know, based on what we've
Speaker 1: we've we've read and discussed regarding schizophrenia in the past,
Speaker 1: I think there there is a lot of room for
Speaker 1: supernatural ideas to emerge from either directly from individuals who
Speaker 1: are struggling with schizophrenia, or people who are observing or
Speaker 1: or trying to help individuals who are dealing with schizophrenia.
Speaker 1: But oh yeah, I mean it's always you always have
Speaker 1: to wonder if certain supernatural beliefs have some kind of
Speaker 1: origin and conditions that cause hallucination. Right, and then I
Speaker 1: didn't see any particular studies that looked at this, but
Speaker 1: I I can't help but think of course of our
Speaker 1: old our old friends sleep paralysis as well. Sleep paralysis
Speaker 1: is often mentioned, uh in episodes or experiences that involve
Speaker 1: demons or ghosts or your alien visitations. But certainly one
Speaker 1: of the cores in the vampire myth, right, is something
Speaker 1: came to you in your bed while you were asleep
Speaker 1: and and preyed upon you, fed upon your blood. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I think the idea of you know, of waking
Speaker 1: in this this weird lucinogenic state, being unable to move.
Speaker 1: I think that would lend itself well to uh, to
Speaker 1: vampire interpretations, or at the very least as any of
Speaker 1: these things are ultimately doing, like provide fuel for the
Speaker 1: pre existing vampire myth flame. Yeah, And I think that's
Speaker 1: a lot of what we need to emphasize here is
Speaker 1: that we don't want to create the impression we think
Speaker 1: that there is any one single condition that created the
Speaker 1: vampire legend. I mean, it's clearly something that is a
Speaker 1: very good ad myth in its own right. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of different versions of it, especially since you know,
Speaker 1: we've been focusing on especially like the eighteenth nineteenth century
Speaker 1: Eastern European version of the vampire lore, which itself is
Speaker 1: fairly varied but contributed to what became you know, the
Speaker 1: the Dracula vampire. But they're all kinds of vampires around
Speaker 1: the world that have their own local inspirations. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the so many of the like the mesu
Speaker 1: American and South American versions are just so grotesquely fascinating. Um.
Speaker 1: I think I've discussed some of those in the show before.
Speaker 1: One more thing I just remembered that we hadn't mentioned,
Speaker 1: but we took a quick look at was the idea
Speaker 1: of linking vampire lore and specifically the story of Dracula,
Speaker 1: to the idea of hereditary somnambulism. You know, the sleepwalk, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which you can certainly see. Before people understood that that
Speaker 1: might have just sort of mundane neurological causes. Uh, people
Speaker 1: could look at that kind of behavior and say, oh, something,
Speaker 1: something very creepy is going on. Now, my you know,
Speaker 1: my child is sleepwalking out of the house in the night.
Speaker 1: He or she is being lured out by some kind
Speaker 1: of predator, some kind of supernatural parasite, inviting them out
Speaker 1: to be drained. All right, Well, there you have it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go and close up the clinic for today,
Speaker 1: but who knows, maybe we'll be back uh someday to
Speaker 1: discuss uh and evaluate us some additional cases of alleged vamporism. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely positive we have not exhausted the possible links
Speaker 1: between medical conditions and vampire lore. So there's no way
Speaker 1: there's not more to talk about. There will always be
Speaker 1: more patients, all right, if you want to check out
Speaker 1: more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, including the
Speaker 1: episode that preceded this one. Head on over to stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you will
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